


If I Never See Your Face Again (It Would Be A Real Shame)

by Lucy_Claire



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Blind Date, Cuban Lance, Hawaiian Hunk, Japanese Keith, Lance is a Meme, M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-07 04:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7701700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucy_Claire/pseuds/Lucy_Claire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance's life is turned sideways when, on Valentine's Day, Hunk arranges a blind date for him with resident loner Keith Kogane to kill two birds with one stone: </p><p>1. Have someone keep Lance company for the day </p><p>2. Help Keith make friends.</p><p>It goes about as well as you'd expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was February, which meant it was literally the worst time to be single, especially if you were Lance McClain.

Almost everyone around him seemed to have paired up or have been paired up for a while now, and if they hadn’t then the heart-shaped pink and red balloons in the air, the packs of giggling girls showing each other their phones, the shops upon shops hanging red signs for Valentine’s discounts already gave them that extra nudge of bravery to ask someone out. Even if they didn’t have someone, they probably had that one best friend who would at least be by their side during Forever Alone February.

Lance would have been fine with that last option if Hunk hadn’t gone and gotten himself a fucking girlfriend on New Year’s. 

“Would you stop acting like a territorial cat?” Hunk begged, finally taking off his headphones to face Lance. He was laying on his stomach, facing the door, a book about the basics of mechanical engineering open by his elbows.

Feeling a bit childish and stubborn, Lance continued on with his rant, pointing an accusing finger at Hunk and declaring, “She took you away from me!”

Hunk blinked at him, his mouth forming a small O of uncertainty. “Dude, I wasn’t yours to take away.”

“Yes, you were — are. You’re my best friend, remember?”

Hunk’s brows fell flat with his lips into a dull, tired expression as he deadpanned, “And that means I can’t date Shay?”

“Not that you can’t date her, but that you also need to make time for me, who is your best friend.”

“Make time for you? I live with you!”

Lance slapped a hand on his forehead, his entire body slumping with his shoulders, creating a small, weak bend in his knees and hunching him forward a little. “I mean we don’t hang out like we used to, we don’t go out and do stuff, haven’t really since October.”

“I know, but I’ve been busy with all this stuff and then I had to fly back home twice in November and December.”

Lance dropped on the middle of his bed, crossing his arms. “Too busy with Shay.”

Hunk chucked a pen cap at him frustratedly. “Would you quit it?”

They were in their dorm, Hunk’s side was clean and organized, a calendar full of Hawaii’s most beautiful spots right above his bed, his bedside lamp shaped like a glass pineapple and his books all arranged by color on the removable shelf he had installed towards the end of his bed. Lance’s side, on the other hand, was cluttered the same way his room at home was. His bed covers were kicked into a rumpled pile at the end of his bed, his nightstand was covered in sticky rings from all the cups of tea and hot coco he set there throughout this whole winter, a tipped-over picture frame sat on the edge and his poster of Panic! At the Disco circa 2011 was half-hanging off the wall, covering the dude who wasn’t Brendon Urie. That was also not counting the many inside-out clothes piled on the trunk at the foot of his bed and the shoes under his bed. Hunk managed to split their room down the middle so Lance’s clutter would stay on his side and Hunk’s side would stay as clean as the day he moved in.

 Lance could clean it up the same way if he wanted to, he just wanted to wait until spring actually rolled around for him to do any spring cleaning.

“Is this about Valentine’s Day?” Hunk asked.

“No, it’s not about Valentine’s Day — _of course it’s about Valentine’s Day!_ ” Lance threw his hands up, flailing with every heated word. “We always hung out together, watched chick flicks and ate a shit-ton of chocolate, and now you’re spending it with Shay.”

“Are you asking me to not spend the most romantic holiday with my girlfriend?”

Lance nodded, sticking his lip out in an exaggerated pout.

“No, Lance,” Hunk sighed. “I already spend Halloween, Easter and a dozen other of your weird Catholic feast days with you. I sometimes even stay for Thanksgiving.”

“You didn’t stay last year.”

“Yes, because it was the first time in years my cousins from Japan came back to Hawaii.”

“How in the world do you have Japanese cousins?” Lance asked.

“The same way you have blonde cousins,” Hunk said simply. 

Lance’s family was interesting combination, a sample size of the mix-matched genetics thanks to generations of immigrants intermarrying and recessive genes. Or at least that’s how his mother explained it when he asked why he and her were the only ones in their family that had blue eyes while the others had hazel and brown, and why his father’s family has an Irish last name. 

“Isn’t there someone you want to ask out, just for the day?” Hunk asked him.

“The only ones I wanted to ever date here are dating each other,” Lance pointed out bitterly, remembering how he categorized Shiro and Allura holding hands down the hall in September as a double-betrayal. Though he had no shame in admitting that he thought about them both together, the fantasy usually involved him being in the same room, either watching or between them.

“Anyone you want to platonically hang out with that isn’t me? 

“Fine, have fun being all by yourself if you’re going to be this difficult.” 

Lance took that chance to start wailing Céline Dion’s _All By Myself_ off-key. _“All byyyyyy myyyyyyseeeeeeeelf! Don’t wanna be all byyyyyy myyyyyyseeeeeelf anymooooore!”_

Hunk threw his pillow at Lance’s face, knocking him flat on his back in a fit of giggles. “Alright! Alright! I’ll ask Shay if she has a friend for you if being alone on the fourteenth is that scary.”

Lance sat upright like a rebounding plastic ruler that had been bent too far back. “You will? For real?”

“Yes, yes, now shut up and let me finish this section!”

Lance punched the air and did a little dance in his seat. Looks like Hunk and him will be going on a double date, that way Lance will get a temporary — or, who knows, not-so-temporary — girlfriend and he won’t break the tradition of spending the worst-time-to-be-alone day with Hunk.

 

* * *

 

 

There was no double date.

“You lied to me!” Lance yelled into his iPhone, holding it up in front of his face as he gestured angrily at Hunk through FaceTime, not in the least bit concerned that anyone could now see his faded Avril Lavigne phone case, a gag gift from Hunk himself to harken back to the distant days of 2007 where Lance was obsessed with all things Avril. He still cringed when he heard _Hello Kitty_.

Hunk’s unimpressed face stared back at him dully. _“You literally made the whole double date thing up in your head.”_

“Did not!” Lance denied just a bit too loudly, catching weird looks from passersby on the street, all couples and packs of girls wearing pink, white and red. He was standing outside the best sushi restaurant within biking distance of campus, Fujiwara’s, the place Shay had texted him to go to, but once he arrived he found no Hunk, no Shay and no way to figure out where Shay’s friend was. 

_“Lance, you wanted a date for Valentine’s, I got you a date for Valentine’s.”_

Shay appeared over his shoulder to briefly correct, _“Actually_ I _got you a date.”_

Hunk fondly rolled his eyes. _“She got you a date, a date that’s probably waiting for you. Please don't make an ass of yourself in public.”_

Lance huffed several griping complaints under his breath, throwing in a “Rassem, fassem, Dick Dastardly,” for good measure.

Hunk caught that and replied with a _“Muttely, do something!”_

Lance’s effort to stay pissed at him instantly broke. “Damn, I miss _Boomerang_ cartoons.”

 _“We’ll binge-watch a bunch of them,”_ Hunk promised. 

“Yeah?”

 _“Yeah, you’re right about us not spending time together in ages, so we should at least re-watch all of the old_ Scooby-Doo _.”_

“I’m holding you to that.” Lance glanced back through the window, scanning all the booths for empty booths or booths that had one girl in them. “Say, what’s my date’s name?”

Hunk got very quiet all of a sudden. _“Uh, Shay, wanna answer that for me? And how do I even find her?”_

Shay appeared over his shoulder again. _“Your date has black hair and is wearing a red motorcycle jacket.”_

“Great!” 

It then occurred to Lance that they didn’t really answer his question. Before he could finish getting “But what’s her name?” out his mouth both Hunk and Shay hurriedly said goodbye and ended the call.

Lance gave the phone one last suspicious look and went back inside, scoping out for red jackets and black hair.

Only one person fit that description. And it wasn’t a girl.

Sitting in a booth at the far back of the restaurant was a pale, wiry guy who was at least half-Asian, his silky black hair cut into a jagged mullet, his slim body somehow filling up the red motorcycle jacket. He kept glancing around as he ripped open the velcro strap of his fingerless gloves over and over, like he was waiting for someone. Waiting for Lance.

Lance went straight to the bathroom, called up Hunk again. “A guy? My date is a guy?”

Hunk winced — or was that a cringe. He raised his hands to hold off Lance just long enough to start explaining. “I never said I was getting you a girl date, I just said I was getting you a date.”

“This again?”

_“Hey, it’s not my fault you assumed it was a double date with a girl. I just said a date, and Shay got the date.”_

_“Oh, now_ I _got him the date?”_ Shay’s voice appeared from over his shoulder.

 _“Honey, not now,”_ Hunk begged through tight lips. _“Look, his name is Keith, he stayed here during the holidays all by himself, so he could really use some friends.”_

“Friends. So, this isn’t really a date?” Lance asked, not sure if he was disappointed or relieved.

Hunk didn’t bother expanding, he just begged, _“It’s company, alright? Just try to be nice. Like really nice, he won’t take well to any of your sarcastic quips.”_

“Why not?”

_“He just doesn’t seem to get that kind of stuff. He’s almost literal sometimes. Think it’s because he hasn’t had friends to joke with him. Sarcasm and pop culture are social things.”_

“Then I’m the best way to introduce him to it.”

_“Lance, no!”_

Lance ended the call and marched over to Keith’s table, already rehearsing what he was going to say. That this wasn’t a date, just a lousy set up and Keith better not get any ideas.

Once he got there, it was a different story.

Keith had taken off his jacket and tied back his hair in a short ponytail and it made him suddenly take note of Keith's neck and jawlines. His arms were pretty toned too, a lot more impressive than his jacket would have had him believe.

Snapping out of it, Lance set his hand on the table and pivoted a little, his other hand on his hip, a position meant to establish dominance but judging by Keith’s raised eyebrows it came off as flirtatious more than anything. Lance cleared his throat and got ready to say something clever and that’s when he finally got a good look at Keith. He was slim in a martial artists-gymnast kind a way, his hair was thick and shiny and mullet be damned, the jagged style suited him, it gave him this cool, unconcerned edge that was added onto by his lazy slouch and crossed arms.

And then there were his eyes, deep, dark and captivating, expressing several emotions his face didn’t. 

Somewhere, deep in the back of his mind, he heard Squidward’s voice go _“Oh, no, he’s hot!”_

“You Lance?” Keith asked, and holy shit his voice deeper than Lance expected. “About time you showed up. I was starting to wonder if I was getting pranked again.”

He looked Lance up and down in a detached, probing way, like he was committing parts of him to memory not taking an impression or even checking him out. He didn’t know how to feel about that.

Keith’s eyes finally met his as he bluntly said, “Have to be honest, I was expecting something else entirely.”

Caught between telling him that he has been graced with Lance’s presence and should be yelling “I’m not worthy!” and telling him that he was a lot cuter than he expected and was giving Lance a bit of a crisis, he ended up processing Keith’s words last minute — and getting a bit miffed, because just what did he mean by _“Expecting something else entirely?”_ — And going with, “Yeah, well I expected a date with a hot girl and got tricked into babysitting a scrawny loser who can’t make his own friends instead, so I guess that we all can’t all get what we want.”

Keith blinked at him, wide-eyed. Then he threw his drink in Lance’s face. “I change my mind. You’re exactly what I expected.”

Keith picked up his jacket and stomped out of the shop, not looking back once.

It was at that moment that Lance McClain realized that he had fucked up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to comment! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧


	2. Chapter 2

Lance stumbled out of the shop, nearly slipping and landing on his face. Once he was out, he searched every direction until he spotted Keith’s red jacket.

He chased him, waving his hand above his head. “Hey! Wait! Hey, Keith, WAIT!” 

Keith slowed down and threw Lance an angry look over his shoulder. “What do you want now?”

Lance came to a jogging stop. Now that he had Keith’s attention, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it? Did he start with _sorry_ or was just a bit too impersonal for whatever this was supposed to be? 

Keith turned around to face him, one hand in his pocket and the other holding his jacket behind his back, standing with one foot out, leg bent as if to easily slide one step closer, his entire mood and posture deeply casual, like he could knife Lance or kiss him without it seeming out of the ordinary. 

“Are you going to say anything?” Keith asked, a bit frustrated and — holy shit his voice. It gave Lance the same shivers Shiro’s did back when he had that nauseating schoolgirl crush on him. 

“I — um. I — that all came out wrong, back there.” Lance nervously rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not an asshole, I swear, it’s just sometimes parts of me act without my brain’s permission? It’s in a first-thought best-thought mode almost all the time, you know what I mean?”

Keith’s posture relaxed, he brought down the jacket and sized Lance up. “And you can’t help it?”

“I try, but whenever I put any kind of effort into how I act for too long it kind of feels like  —”

“— Your brain is burning and you want to cry from frustration?” Keith offered.

“Yes! Exactly!” Lance agreed, punching the air. “Wait, are you ADHD too?”

“No,” Keith said simply, dark eyes now unsure. “You didn’t answer my question. What do you want?”

Lance sighed, looking around. “Look, today was all Hunk’s idea, and it was really nice of him to even bother too, and I kinda promised I wouldn’t make an ass out of myself and I did, so, can I kind of make it up to you?”

Keith blinked at him, confused more than unsure. “That still doesn’t tell me what you want.”

“I want to say sorry, dammit! Do you wanna go back inside and start all over and pretend that your —” Lance paused to lick the sticky, sugary wetness on his upper lip that was all that remained from Keith’s soda. “ — Cherry Coke isn’t drying on my face right now?”

Keith crossed his arms and poked his tongue against the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. “Why are you here?”

“Why am I — ? I just told you. Hunk set us up!”

“Yes, but why did you agree to this or even ask? You didn’t seem too happy to be there from what I gathered.”

“Because it’s Valentine’s Day! Literally the worst day to be alone. Hunk told me he would set me up with a friend of Shay’s for a double date. I came to the place he texted me, found no Hunk, no Shay and no girlfriend of Shay’s.”

Keith was taken aback. “They didn’t tell you who I was?”

“No! They told you though.” Lance noticed. Now suspicious, Lance squinted at Keith skeptically, asking, “What did they tell you exactly to get you to come here?”

Keith pulled his hand out of his pocket and handed Lance a crumpled paper ball. In a handwriting that was too neat and even to be Lance’s, the note read: 

 

_Hey, I’ve been trying to find ways to approach you for months now, but you don’t seem like the approachable type, so I figured the best way to ask was by note._

_Do you want to go out with me tomorrow? If yes, show up at Fujiwara’s at 2 pm tomorrow._

_— Lance._

 

“Hunk gave me this, told me he was passing it on for a friend,” said Keith in a distant, empty tone, like the mere idea of it depressed him. “Can’t believe I fell for this shit again.”

Not only did he make Lance sound like a twelve year-old girl passing _Do you like me? Check Yes or No!_ notes in class, but he seriously embarrassed Keith, who also seemed to have gotten his hopes up about this. 

Lance was going to kill Hunk. And Pidge, because this was definitely her handwriting!

“Well,” Lance began. “This is super embarrassing. Kind of does feel like we’re being punk’d.”

“So, what now?” Keith asked.

“We could go back inside and start over or we could go home and pretend this never happened,” Lance said. “Which do you wanna do?”

Keith bit his bottom lip and looked around. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? You either want to stay or you want to go.” 

“Half of me wants to go and pretend I didn’t bother today, but the other half of me is…”

Lance waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Curious about me?”

“No,” Keith said bluntly. “The other half of me is pissed that I bothered to come here today.”

“I kind of get you on that, but I also kind of don’t. Isn’t you wanting to leave the same as being pissed?”

“I don’t think it is? Some part of me kind of hoped this was genuine, like somebody actually likes me enough to send me a note and everything, but I should have known it was a joke. No one asks me to come sit with them, or come to their party or asks me out unless it’s on a dare or for a prank!” Keith shouted the last part and his voice tore through Lance’s chest like an arrow. His face was red, his eyes started to water a bit. He put a hand on his mouth and quickly turned on his heel to continue walking down the road.

It took a lot longer for Lance’s brain to tell his feet to move. He chased after Keith, caught him by the arm and pulled him back. “Do you want to break that pattern?”

Keith stared at him. “What?”

“You said no one asks you out unless it’s on a dare or a prank. Well, technically I didn’t ask you out and we’re both in this awkward boat together,” Lance explained, taking a breath before asking, “Do you want to go out with me?”

Hesitation wobbled in his wet eyes, but Keith blinked the tears away and nodded. “Yeah, sure, why not?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [**Tumblr**](http://lucyclairedelune.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Don't forget to comment! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I listened to a lot of Maroon 5 while writing this, especially _Misery_ and _Makes Me Wonder_. 
> 
>  
> 
> _**Makes Me Wonder** is such a Klance song I will fight you on this_

They made it back to Fujiwara’s and settled into a booth at the very back. Their waitress, a girl Lance recognized from campus, Marie, came up to them with menus and expectant curiosity. She had a peppy, wide-eyed face and thick blonde hair that was held up in a rigid cone-like bug at the top of her head.

Judging by Keith’s reaction, he knew her and didn’t like her. He rigidly crossed his arms and glared at her while she just put on her biggest smile. “Hi, I’m Marie, and I’ll be your server today. What can I get you to drink.”

“Cherry Coke for him, Green Tea Arizona for me,” Lance told her, pointing a finger-gun her way.

Marie handed them each a menu and left. Once she was out of earshot Keith snorted, “Green Tea? That is the weakest of all the Arizona flavors.”

“Uh, no, it’s not,” Lance scoffed, making a cutting jab across the air with the side of his hand. “It’s a classic, and we’re in a Japanese restaurant, so regular green tea suits the style.”

“Your socks are two different colors, so I don’t style is your forte,” said Keith with a small smirk.

“What would you know about style, Keith?” Lance choked a little, miffed once again. “You have a mullet!”

Keith touched the end of his uneven ponytail. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“It’s ridiculous, more ridiculous than your disdain of good quality ice tea.” 

“You do realize Arizona ice tea is not Japanese and the Japanese have their green tea either hot or in desserts, right?” Keith deadpanned. “Besides, literally any flavor is better than plain green ice tea.”

“Oh, let me guess, are you a lemon ice tea kinda guy or are you a Razzleberry Arizona dude?” Lance mocked.

“Peach, actually,” said Keith. 

Marie returned. “Have you decided on your order?”

Keith tossed his menu her way and looked towards the inside of the booth at the simplistic painting of a bonsai tree. “I’ll have the sukiyaki.”

Lance eyed Marie, wondering just what Keith’s issue was. “I’ll have a California roll —”

Keith snorted loudly and pretended to cough into his hand.

“What?” Lance asked.

“You come to a Japanese restaurant, talk about how you have to go with the style and order a California roll? What’s the matter, afraid a little raw fish?”

Lance could feel the spite stewing in him when he flipped open the menu and pointed to the first thing his eyes landed on. “I’ll have a rainbow roll and an…” he paused, squinted more for show rather than effort as he sounded out _“Ikura gunkan-maki?”_

“Coming right up,” said Marie, scribbling on her notepad.

The second she was gone, Lance figured he couldn’t wait to ask and bent halfway across the table, slamming his hands down. “Okay, what’s your deal?”

“I have no deal. I was tricked into coming here just like you.”

“No, not that kind of deal. Why do you keep glaring daggers at our waitress?”

Keith looked away from him, back to the bonsai painting. “I went to high school with her. Her, her friends and her boyfriend’s friends took turns having their fun with me.” 

“Fun how?”

“Like scribble _Retard_ on my locker in sharpie, break into it and steal my books during finals week. Invite me to birthdays just to pull pranks on me or dare each other to harass me or invite me and give me the wrong address so I’d show up and wait for hours. Ask me to sleep over so they could put gum in my hair while I sleep.” Keith pulled on the edge of one of the choppy locks that made up his bangs. “Send the entire class Valentines and leave me out, or send me a Valentine that said ‘roses are red, violets are blue, I pity the poor fucker that marries you’.”

With every example, Lance found himself sliding further and further down his seat and into a sad slouch. 

“They tried ganging up on me a few times, especially after they spread the rumor that I was gay. It started with shoving me, calling me names, stealing my clothes when I was in the shower, but then Marie’s boyfriend decided they should start hitting me too,” Keith continued, like he had thought all about this several times before and put them in order of least awful to downright awful. “I knocked out his front teeth with my knee.”

“Why is she smiling at you then?”

“I fucked up his face the week she found out he was cheating on her, that might have something to do with it.”

“Did she ever tell you she was sorry?”

“I don’t want them to tell me that they’re sorry, I want to them to never cross my path again, I’ve had enough shitty memories starring their faces.”

Lance chewed on his straw thoughtfully. He had had a pretty normal high school experience, he was in marching band with Hunk, and everyone in band was basically their own clique in a high school that boasted three-thousand students, so he didn’t cross paths with any bullies. There were too many people for the school to form any kind of hierarchy like they seemed to do in smaller schools.

“Why were they such dicks to you?”

“That’s the worst thing,” said Keith, still looking away, his chest rising and falling in a faster than comfortable pace, his arms still tightly crossed. “I asked them a few times why they ignored me, why didn’t want to be my friends, why they made me the butt of all their jokes, I always got some bullshit answer or another. Sometimes, they just said they didn’t know why, they just did it because they could.”

“I want to punch your entire school district right now,” Lance said. “I want to punch them all in the dick.”

The corners of Keith’s lips twitched up slightly, his eyes slid to their sides to glance at Lance. “I think half the population doesn’t have dicks.”

“In the uterus, then,” Lance corrected. Any girl who messed with Keith liked that and egged their boyfriends to bully him should get at least a few more period cramps.

“You’d hit a girl?” Keith asked disbelievingly.

Lance draped an arm over the back of his seat and quoted, _“The hammer of justice is unisex.”_

“Hammer of justice, huh?”

“The hammer is also my penis.”

Keith spluttered out a laugh so sudden he started coughing. It was a nice laugh.

“You alright there, buddy?” Lance asked, trying to keep that goofy smile off his face.

Keith nodded, coughing harder. “You are so random.”

“It’s part of my charm.” 

Their food arrived with a different server. Marie must have heard Lance’s desire to punch anyone who bothered Keith. 

The new waiter set a big black bowl of soup in front of Keith, it was full of this noodles and an assortment of vegetables and meat. What Lance got was a sushi roll topped with four kinds of raw fish and a plate with two black things topped with a ton of orange balls.

“What —” Lance asked, prodding the orange balls with the tip of his chopstick. “ — is this?”

“Roe,” Keith said with a mouthful of thick slippery noodles before slurping the rest into his mouth.

“Which is?” Lance prodded, slightly disgusted by Keith’s weird soup.

“Salmon caviar,” Keith said, twirling one of his chopsticks like a baton with long nimble fingers. “What you ordered is roe on rice wrapped in nori.”

“Hey, I’ve had orange eggs on a California roll before and it wasn’t this big,” Lance insisted, picking up one of the sushi pieces that had the most recognizable slab of raw fish, salmon. Though he mostly picked it because it had the biggest slice of avocado and he figured that was a good starter for his stomach incase the white fish turned out bad. “This is mutant salmon shit.”

“Then that was probably trout,” Keith spoke into his bowl, which he had lifted to his mouth to drink the soup.

Lance couldn’t help feeling a bit more disgusted, even he would totally eat like this at home or in the guarded safety of his dorm with only Hunk as his witness, he at least had the decency to act like he had great table manners when he was with others. “Dude, the spoon is right there.”

“This kind of spoon barely gets any soup, it would take forever for me to eat this,” Keith argued before he went back to sipping his soup. God, there was a lot of clutter in that bowl.

“Just what are you eating exactly? Is that tofu?”

“Sukiyaki. It’s tofu, beef, mushrooms, noodles, cabbage and raw eggs.”

“Raw eggs? What are you, Rocky?”  

Keith frowned at him slightly. “Who’s Rocky?”

Lance dropped his piece. _“Dude.”_

“What?”

“Who’s Rocky? Rocky Balboa! The Italian Stallion! Only the best boxer in the history of cinema!” Lance said in his best boxing match announcer voice as he punched the air.

 Keith blinked at him with blank eyes. “I thought a rocky balboa was a bumpy species of snake.”

Lance instantly cracked up, and once he went from just laughing to all out guffawing he couldn’t stop. He got weird looks from several other patrons, but the weirdest had to be Keith’s offended glare. “Are you laughing at me?”

Breathless and still in the middle of a squeaky laugh, Lance shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. Oh, God, he had started crying. 

“Then what’s so funny, huh?” Keith demanded, heated, practically growling. Which, in itself, also sounded pretty hot.

“It does,” Lance wheezed. “Rocky Balboa does sound like a species of snake covered in bumps that tries to blend in with rocks.”

“It’s not that funny.”

“It is when you imagine a fucking bumpy snake with little arms wearing boxing gloves.” 

Keith’s offense flipped into wide-eyed realization. His lips trembled and restrained snorting barely lasted longer than a second until he shook so hard he had to finally channel out his laughter.

They sat there for what felt like ages, cackling like idiots over practically nothing and Lance had not laughed this hard since he graduated high school. 

When the laughter died down Keith’s face was as red as his jacket and the last of Lance’s hilarity tears slid down the curves of his cheeks. 

“You ever hear _Eye of the Tiger?_ ” Lance asked him.

Keith nodded, tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “It’s on my training playlist.”

“The _Rocky_ movies are what made that epic ear worm famous, they were put on all these epic training montages that will make you feel a thousand times more epic working out after you watch it.”

“How many movies are there?”

“Six, I have all of them on my computer…” Lance looked up at Keith from under his lashes unsurely. “…You wanna watch them sometime?”

“After this? Definitely.”

Lance punched the air again. “Woop-woop!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [**Tumblr**](http://lucyclairedelune.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Don't forget to comment! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this the longest date ever smh

 

“So,” Keith began, swirling his fat noodles around in their bowl with his chopsticks. “What do people usually do on dates?”

Lance stopped prodding the orange salmon eggs to gawk at Keith. “Did you seriously just ask me that?”

“Yes?”

“Have you heard any song or watched any teen movie or show ever? How do you not know what goes on during dates?”

Keith’s expression flattened in a very “Are you fucking kidding me?” manner. “Are you going to answer me or are you going to continue acting like this as important as knowing not to stick your finger down a garbage disposal?”

A full-body shiver ran up Lance’s arms, shoulders and neck. It was freshman biology and Lance had made the mistake of dropping the dissected remains of that day’s lesson into the teacher’s desk-slash-sink and reached his fingers in just after he had turned on the disposal. If it weren’t for Hunk’s Lance-is-fucking-up sense tingling at that moment and having him bodily remove Lance from the sink, Lance would be missing the tips of his index and middle fingers. It was a moment of forgetfulness that would forever haunt Lance whenever he came near any kitchen sink.

Lance set his chin in his palm and tossed one of the roe eggs into his mouth. “You heard about that, huh?” 

“I was there.”

Lance’s left incisor popped the egg and this tangy oily taste exploded on his tongue, fueling the little surprised gasp that came with his astonished “You were?”

Keith’s expression flattened further, disbelief clear in his dark eyes. “I was in the desk right behind you, Lance.”

“You were?” Lance repeated, straightening up a bit. “How come I didn’t remember that? I don’t remember us being in any of the same classes.”

“We had freshman Psychology, Biology and Math 110 together.” Keith stated stiffly. “And we have Intro to Japanese this year.”

Lance was torn between feeling very shitty that he had never noticed Keith at all before today and making a quick quip about how Keith always noticed him because he was so attractive. His brain decided to go for neither and head straight for “Why are you taking Japanese?” Lance squinted at him. “What kind of Asian are you anyway?”

After the words flew out his mouth, he picked up on just how slightly racist they could have sounded from Keith’s flinch. 

“I’m half-Japanese, half-Scottish, according to my old foster mom,” Keith said. “You?”

“Cuban, mostly.”

Keith’s eyebrows rose slightly. “What’s your last name again?”

“McClain, like John McClane,” Lance answered, enthusiastically making finger-guns at Keith, who didn’t seem to know who John McClane was.

 _“Die Hard?”_ Lance tried. “You know, Bruce Willis? Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker!”

Keith blinked.

Lance sighed, dropping his hands. “Who am I kidding, you don’t know who _Rocky_ is, why do I expect you to know _Die Hard?_ ”

Keith kicked his leg under the table. Lance moved to kick him back but he didn’t find either of Keith’s feet, he just tapped around the floor aimlessly. Giving up, he checked under the table and found that Keith had folded his legs on his seat. “Cheater!”

Keith rolled his eyes. “If you’re Cuban, then why do you have a British last name?”

 _“If you’re from Africa, then why are you white?”_ Lance quoted in his best airhead Valley Girl voice. “That’s what you sound like.”

“Answer the damn question, will you?”

Lance took a deep breath and started the lecture he had given so, so many times before to everyone who even tried to start saying the sentence “How can you be Hispanic if you don’t have a Spanish last name?” to him. “Listen, Keith, buddy, Middle and South America are made up of immigrants just like North America is, and I mean all kinds of immigrants. Anyone who’s born there and takes on the culture is a Latino and probably Hispanic unless they’re from Brazil.” 

“Because they speak Portuguese in Brazil?”

“Bingo!” Lance gave him a thumbs-up. “Now, for the love of all that is good and holy, not everyone from Latin America has a Spanish name or is tan. It’s a huge place and people from all over move there, so please, please don’t ever tell anyone they’re not a ‘real Latino’ because they’re white or Asian or Lebanese, because that happens a lot.”

“You feel pretty strongly about this.”

Lance got irrationally defensive. “You think? My dad’s family immigrated to Cuba from Ireland in the late 1800s, so the name just kept getting passed down up until they moved to Florida around World War Two. They had my Abuelo Tomas there, then he moved with my Abuela Cristina to Texas and they had my dad there and named him _Arthur_ , fucking Arthur,” Lance stressed. “Then my dad met my mom, who’s half-Cuban, half-Lebanese and her name is Marlene Yazbek."

"Then what?"

"Then they got married and Dad moved back with her to SoCal, where mostly every Latino is Mexican.”

Lance took in a deep breath, he could feel himself getting heated by remembering every single time he had to explain this to people in middle and high school, and the earful he gave one history teacher who tried to claim he was making up his family history so he could connect with his most of his class and that was somehow ‘culturally insensitive’. Something that wouldn’t have happened if his name was Lance Tapia-Gonzalez rather than Lance Arthur McClain. Oh, and also he couldn’t speak any Spanish. Oh, how they judged him for that, especially the little old ladies back when he worked as a cashier at Walmart. Those grannies always gave him dirty looks when he told them he understood better than he spoke, and he understood none of them.

Hey, it wasn't his fault that the Spanish Bisbuela Milena spoke whenever they visited Varadero in Cuba sounded almost nothing like the Spanish the Baja California Mexicans spoke.

“I’m third-generation, bite me!”

“What?”

Lance shrunk in his seat. “Did I say that out loud?”

“You did.”

“Heh, sorry, got worked up for a minute there.” Lance cleared his throat and wiped the sweat off his brow. “So, we were talking about our Japanese class. Why’re you taking it?”

Keith leaned back in his seat and shrugged. “Figured I’d try for the whole ‘reconnect with your roots’ thing through that, since I mostly know nothing. Why’re you taking it?”

Lance mumbled his answer very quickly. Keith leaned halfway across the table, hand cupping his ear. “What was that?”

“IthoughtitwouldimpressShiroifIaskedhimoutinJapanese.”

“What?”

“I thought it would impress Shiro if I asked him out in Japanese!”

Keith’s eyes grew wide right before he started laughing for the third time today. “Damn, that’s kind of pathetic.”

Lance felt himself deflate from the shame of it all. “Don’t remind me!”

“How’d he turn you down?”

“Very, very nicely,” Lance said bitterly. “Which makes it tens times worse, because he had been an asshole about it like a normal human being, I would have been able to get over him fast and not turn as red as a tomato every time he says hi to me.”

“At least he knows you exist now,” Keith pointed out.

“True. Does he know you exist?”

“Unless he got hit hard enough to knock out the last three years of his life, then yeah, he should.” Keith fished a piece of meat from his bowl and offered it to Lance. Lance honestly preferred it over the fat caviar he ordered and accepted it with an open mouth. “My last foster mom was his aunt Naomi. She still kind of is my foster mom since she didn’t boot me out the second I turned eighteen, so I still go home with her and Shiro during the summer.”

Lance’s eyes nearly jumped out of his head at the words ‘go home with Shiro for the summer’. “Dude, you live with Shiro?”

Keith got all wistful all of the sudden and nodded. He pointed to Lance’s caviar bites from hell and asked, “Are you gonna eat that?”

“Help yourself.” Lance shoved the plate away from him like he was afraid it was going to attack him. “Dude, if you know Shiro then how come you don’t hang out with him? How come you don’t have any friends here?”

“Incase you already forgot what I told you about high school, I don’t know how to make friends.”

“No, no, no, I mean why didn’t you ask Shiro to help you with that, since he’s really popular and hot and nice so he’s friends with everyone.”

“He tried,” Keith admitted, popping the entire roe piece in his mouth. “They’d talk to me once or twice just for his sake, lose interest and instantly forget about me.”

“Instantly? I have a hard time believing that.”

“Lance, you literally did not know I existed until today and we’ve had four classes together. I’m that forgettable.”

If Lance could physically kick his own ass right now he would, because he seemed to be sticking his foot in his mouth over and over. 

“You’re really not.” Lance reached across the table and nudged Keith’s hand, getting his attention. “You’re just a wallflower, it’s always hard to notice one of those because they never say anything. I mean, everyone notices me because I’m _loud_ , and I talk _a lot_.”

A smile smile quirked at Keith’s lips. “At least you’re self-aware.”

“Damn right I am — wait, is that a jab? Are you throwing shade at me or something?”

Keith didn’t say anything, his smile just became a slightly bigger smirk.

“Oh, you little shit.” Lance reached out to mess up his hair but Keith’s leg came out of nowhere and kicked Lance’s shin. Lance moved to stomp on a foot and once again found nothing. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” Keith pointed out. “What do people do on dates?”

“They do this,” Lance said, opening out his arms, indicating the scene set around them. “They go out for a walk, eat, talk, maybe see a movie, enjoy each other’s company and all that jazz.”

Keith nudged his head towards the door. “Wanna go for a walk? There’s this park I always go to when I want to be away from all the noise and the people.”

“Ah, man, what would I do at a park?”

“There’s a big swing-set,” Keith told him.

Lance hopped up immediately. “Sold!” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's song is Halsey's _Roman Holiday_

Seeing as this wasn’t a real date, they split the bill. Lance’s fat salmon egg disaster that Keith ended up gobbling up was four bucks a piece. Never again was he ordering anything to impress anyone because look where that got him.

Not like he was trying to impress Keith or anything, he was just trying to spite him. Keith felt too defensive and apathetic to impress anyway.

They refilled their drinks and headed out, it was still day-up and it wasn’t half as cold as it was last week. Summer in California did tend to start around March. Yeah, summer, not spring, because shit got abruptly hot around here where one day they turned the A/C up to eighty-four and then the next day, literally, they’d be cranking it down to seventy-five.

“So, were you serious about going to the park?” Lance asked him, lazily chewing his straw. 

Keith stopped sucking on the straw of his giant Coca Cola cup and pushed his bangs off to the side and out of his eyes. “You don’t wanna go?”

“I do! I was just wondering if you were serious or not.”

“Why would I joke about going to the park?”

“Because we’re grown men?”

“I don’t see your point.”

Lance waved him off and brought out his phone to check the time. It was four-thirty and Hunk, Shay and Pidge, the little backstabber, had left him a total of ten messages asking about what he did when and if he talked to Keith and what happened. Seeing as they all fucked him over in this situation, he would just let the suspense kill them.

“I usually get back around six during the weekdays, but fuck it, I had one afternoon class tomorrow and Hunk could use the time to go through the motions.”

“What motions?”

“The I-duped-my-best-friend-into-thinking-he-was-getting-a-hot-date-motions.”

Keith gave him a funny look, a kind of small, scrutinizing glare.

“What’s with the face?”

“Didn’t you say that this was a date?”

Lance shrugged his shoulders unsurely. This may have been meant to give Keith a good end to another shitty experience but from what Lance could see, Keith wasn’t really feeling this — not feeling him. 

“It’s whatever you want it to be,” he told Keith, going back to his drink. “How far is it?”

“About two miles.”

“Two miles? Bro, you expect us to walk there and get back to campus in time for me to not piss off the guards? It’s a weekday!”

Keith sucked what was left of his Cherry Coke, making that scratchy hollow sound echo within the cup, and tossed it into the nearest trashcan. “Who said we were going on foot.”

Parked right in front of a bakery was a big red and silver motorcycle that looked like something out of Lance’s most epic dreams.

“Duuuuude! Is this yours?” Entranced, Lance rubbed the shiny back of the bike. “So those biking gloves weren’t just for some punk poseur aesthetic, huh?”

Keith straddled the motorbike and picked up a matching red and silver helmet. “I don’t understand what half of that sentence meant.”

Lance rolled his eyes and leaned over the side of the bike to get a better look. There was no sidecar. “Where am I supposed to ride?”

“Right there, genius.” Keith pointed his thumb behind him. “Unless you don’t wanna go…”

Instantly indignant, Lance waved his hands ahead of his chest with each _no_. “No, no, no, I’ll go!”

“Okay then.” Keith tossed him his helmet. “Hop on, we gotta get going before rush hour hits at five.”

“What about your helmet?”

“Only got just the one.”

Lance felt himself blush and he had no idea why. He pulled on the helmet in hope of hiding his reddening face and settled behind Keith, gripping the bottoms of his seat. Keith revved the engine and it roared to life. Once he started to steer out of the parking spot, Keith stopped and looked behind him. “You’re supposed to hold onto me.”

“I think this is fine.”

“Lance, this isn’t a vespa. You’ll fall off if you don’t hold on tight.”

Lance’s eyes went to Keith’s waist and then down to his ass, his shirt was riding up under his short biker jacket so Lance could see the patch of pale skin between the end of the grey shirt and the top of the black pants. He suddenly felt his blush spread into shivering heat across his body as his blood circulated a lot faster, more and more of it rushing south.

He may talk a big game and flirt like no one’s business, but in all actuality, Lance has been on a total of three dates and all of them as part of a group, and he’s only ever gotten to second base once at a freshman mixer last year. He had to get so damn drunk to even stop fidgeting and go for it and in the end, he barely remembered who he made out with, let alone if it was any good.

Feeling his heart pound all over his body, Lance leaned in, pressing his chest against Keith’s back, and wrapped his arm around his waist, the insides of his thighs pressed against the outsides of Keith’s and his crotch dangerously close to Keith’s ass.

The engine roared again and the vibrating underneath them increased by a ten-fold, a shudder of worry went through Lance as he started to second-guess this whole idea. His mom never let him near his uncle Logan’s Harley and always warned him and his siblings against getting on anything that doesn’t have four wheels.

“Hey, Keith — Oh god!” 

The world around him blurred as Keith gripped his handlebars and steered them quickly out onto the street, into the right lane, and out onto the highway. Wind rushed through Keith’s hair and into Lance’s panting mouth as he tightened his grip around Keith’s middle and stretched his neck to look over his shoulder and out onto the road as they shot past every car, bus and cab.

“Holy shit,” Lance breathed, feeling his nerves bunch up and his insides tighten and drop to the bottom from sheer excitement and anxiety. “Holy shit, _this is awesome._ ”

They zipped out of traffic and onto a wider, emptier highway so Keith could ramp up the speed and the wind burst through their jackets, dried out their eyes and mouths and bit at their noses. Lance tightened his legs around the base of the bike and spread out his arms, just to get the feeling that he was flying through the air. _“Jack, I’m flying!”_

“You’ll fly for real if you don’t get your arms back where they should be.”

“Where they should be, huh?” Lance waggled his eyebrows, even though he knew Keith couldn’t see him. “Guess you could say that these arms were made for holding you.”

He didn’t get a response, but it didn’t really matter because as the bike curved along with the road and it leant to the side for just a fraction of a minute, Lance’s heart pumped quicker alongside the adrenaline that coursed through his veins. They could crash any second now, veer off the road and into a telephone pole, spin out of control, slip off the bike itself or have it somersault across the pavement and buck them off and it was exciting as hell. The anticipation and fear made Lance feel more alive than he had in years.

This was why he was dying to be in the sky someday, to feel that anticipation bubbling around in his gut as he brought a plane off the ground and shot it into the sky.

He eased onto Keith, setting his chin on his shoulder as their speed lessened and they breezed through the open road that was starting to fill up with nine-to-fivers. 

“Kinda makes me feel like I’m in _Roman Holiday._ ”

Keith leaned his head back just long enough to catch a glimpse of Lance and ask, “Does that make me Gregory Peck?”

That took Lance completely out of the rush. “Gregory Peck? Are you telling me you fucking know who Gregory fucking Peck is and you don’t know who Bruce Willis is?”

“We all watched _To Kill A Mockingbird_ in high school, Lance,” Keith brushed off. “After that I just kind of wanted to look up his best movies.”

“He wasn’t that attractive,” Lance snorted dismissively.

“Oh, yeah? Who from that time did you think was more attractive than him?” Keith drawled. “Don’t say Marilyn Monroe.”

“Dude, have you seen Lauren Bacall? Or, hell, _have you seen young Marlon Brando?_ ”

Keith threw back his head and laughed. “ _A Streetcar Named Desire_ fucked me over pretty bad during high school. Shiro’s aunt has a ton of old movies and we watched one every week and it was all fine until we watched that one.”

“Was it or was it bad?”

“Doesn’t matter which way, all that matters is that that movie gave me the last sign that I was gay,” Keith said. “Until that Shiro and Naomi just said I was asexual and I went along with it.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen, I think? What about you?”

“Oh, I think I always knew I was into both, I just didn’t have a word for it till I was, like, twelve.” Lance giggled slightly at the memory of him calling up Hunk in the middle of the night and announcing “I’m a bisexual!” but pronouncing the _Bi_ in Bisexual as _Bee_. The amount of _Bee Movie_ jokes that stemmed from that mistake alone once it became meme-worthy was stifling. “I remember watching _The Island_ and not knowing which one I wanted to fuck more, Scarlett Johansson or Ewan McGregor.” 

“Never heard of that movie.”

“Right now, I don’t blame you, because neither did anyone else. Box office bomb.”

They reached a residential spot around the type the daylight started to wane. The playground was pretty much abandoned when Keith parked them near a bench. 

Lance had to unstick himself from Keith’s back. He stumbled off the bike on numb legs and nearly tripped down the short hill that led from the pavement to the grass to the sand. It was a wide space with monkey bars, a seesaw, a big slide complex and, as promised, a big swingset.

Keith suddenly blew past him, taking off his jacket. “Race you to the swings!” 

“Hey! You didn’t give me a head’s start!”

“Snooze you lose!”

Lance chased after him, taking off his jacket and wrapping its arms around his waist. 

Keith leaped and landed feet-first onto the middle swing, grabbing the chains to swing himself back and forth, bending his neck back to check on Lance. “You coming or what?”

Lance jumped for the swing to Keith’s left and slipped, landing his outstretched arms onto the swing sweat and slipping off that too and onto the grass. “Ow.”

“That’s embarrassing.” Keith effortlessly turned around in his swing, still standing. 

Grumbling, Lance got up on the swing carefully, pulling himself up, getting a good grip on the chains to swing himself sideways and bump his shoulder against Keith’s. Keith started swinging back and forth and on his third swing forth, he bumped his shoulder against the back of Lance’s.

They built up a clunky momentum, going back and forth at different speeds, meeting halfway every now and then. Between dusk and the lampposts flickering on around them, Lance had gotten lost in a vague daydream. When he came out of it, he found Keith sitting in his seat, idly rocking with the toes of his boots buried in the sand.

He dropped in his seat and bumped Keith again, turning slightly to hold onto his right chain with both hands. “So, why this place?”

“I like it here, it’s the one place I can think.” 

The faint blue light that surrounded them and the distant white light of the lampposts reflected off Keith’s shiny black hair from different angles, casting shadows on his face, bringing out angles Lance didn’t notice before. He wanted to reach out and run his hands through his hair.

“It’s also the only spot in the desert where you can see all the stars,” Keith added, still gazing up. “Do you ever wonder if we’ll be able to go out there?”

“We as a species? Sure, we will.”

“No, I mean, for traveling through space like we travel on a cruise,” Keith clarified, putting an effort into swinging now, lifting his feet off the sand. “We stop by the planets and then go out past it, to explore, to search the stars —”

 _“ — to seek out new life and civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before,”_ Lance finished for him, feeling cheesy as hell.

Keith nodded at him, running his hand through his hair and all the way to the back to disentangle the band and let his hair loose. “Exactly.”

“I wish, but I don’t think it’ll happen in our lifetime,” Lance said wistfully. “You know, when I was a kid, I really thought I could be a spaceman. I wanted to learn all about space so I could hop from asteroid to asteroid and catch stars in butterfly nets.”

“If you could hop asteroids them you could check out almost every planet like _The Little Prince._ ”

“Maybe I’ll be the Little Prince,” Lance teased.

Keith’s eyes met his head on. “Only if you fall back to Earth.”

“What do you think is the closest we can get to space?”

“Planetariums,” Keith said quickly. “I’ve always wanted to go to one.”

“Dude, there a bunch here in California,” Lance told him, falling further into Keith’s space. “There’s one in San Francisco.”

“Really?”

“Yes! The California Academy of Sciences. My cousin Reina works there.”

Keith counted on his hand. “That’s like seven hours away.”

“That’s nothing! For our senior trip, Hunk and I drove down to Arizona.” 

“I can’t drive seven hours on a motorcycle, Lance.”

“We’ll take my car.”

Keith sped up his swinging with harsh, jerking movements, leaning back and bring his legs up as he gripped the chains. “We?”

“You were talking about us road-tripping there, right?”

“Sure.”

They went back to their aimless rocking until they belt up enough momentum to barely use their backs and legs to go back and forth. Five minutes in, Lance went up so high he was about to be flung out of his seat and into the sky. He closed his eyes and pretended her was floating in space. He cracked open one eye to check on Keith and found him doing the same, lost in the rush, his eyes peacefully shut, the wind moving his hair with each swing.

He felt himself take a deep breath.

“Alrightey then.” Lance swung himself out onto the sand, miraculously landing in a crouch and not on his face and throwing his arms up to signal his success. “Race you to the monkey bars.” 

Keith didn’t race him, he let himself slow down normally then hopped off to join him. He climbed up the top while Lance went from the bottom, doing chin-ups and swapping one bar for another. “Man, I haven’t done this in years. Why don’t they make adult playgrounds?”

“Those are called amusement parks.”

“Fuck off, no, they’re not. I don’t want a rollercoaster of doom, I want a slide and monkey bars.”

“If you say so — whoa.”

Lance’s sweaty fingers slipped off the cold bar. “What?”

“I think I saw a shooting star.”

“Quick! Make a wish!”

“How does that have anything to do with a comet?”

“Wish upon the damn star, Keith.”

Reluctantly, Keith shut his eyes and wished for something, be it great grades or a better haircut. Lance hopped up to the bars again, desperate to get at least three moves without falling.

He had barely managed two consecutive swaps from bar to bar when Keith’s face appeared to him, upside down, bending back down from the gap between the bars.

“Dude, what are you —” Lance’s tongue got caught as his heart rose up in his throat to meet it. Keith’s face was so close, his eyes were so bright in the dim light.

They were the perfect position for a Spider-Man kiss.

He swallowed and continued, “What are you doing?”

“Testing my limits,” Keith answered. “I used to be in gymnastics, I could hang by my legs from a bar for minutes without getting lightheaded.”

That’s enough time for a full Spider-Man make out session.

“Lance?”

Lost in thought and in his eyes, Lance moved in and missed Keith’s mouth, hitting his chin. Keith reared so far back his legs slipped off the bar and he landed face-first on the sand.

“Shit! Shit! Keith, you alright?” 

A groan was his response as he sat up and shoot sand from his shirt and hair. “What was that?”

“I - I have no idea.” 

Shaking it off, Keith hopped up and caught the bars, effortlessly pulling himself up through the gap until he sat on the bar behind him. Lance tried to follow him but he barely had enough upper-body strength to lift himself properly. He went the regular way, climbing up the bars until he reached the top to crawl over to face Keith. 

Keith pointed overhead. “Look, another one.”

As fast as it came, another shooting star flit across the sky, barely giving Lance enough time to focus on one wish. 

“Hey, Lance?”

Turning back to him, Lance barely got out the “Yeah, what it is it?” before he was cut off by Keith grabbing his face and kissing the corner of his mouth. Flailing, Lance early fell off the side of the monkey bars. “What was that?”

Keith smirked. “Payback.”

“Now that we’re even, are you going to give me a real kiss?”

At that, Keith stood on the bars, no hint of hesitation. “Only if you catch me.”

And with that, Keith vaulted off the bars and broke into a run the second his feet hit the ground. Lance followed, slowly but surely, after climbing back down and chasing Keith around the enclosure of the playground.

Once on the grass, Lance found his footing and reached out mid-leap and caught the back of Keith’s belt, bringing them both to the ground with a slam that knocked the air out of their both their lungs.

Laughing in between coughs, Keith turned underneath him. Lance pushed up above him as Keith rose on his elbows, his hair a mess, his skin glowing in the starlight. 

“You caught me,” Keith said. “What now?”

Eyes on his mouth this time, Lance moved in, tilting his head to the right, and kissed him.


	6. Chapter 6

On the ride back, it was starting to feel like this really was _Roman Holiday_. That Lance was Audrey Hepburn, going to be dropped off back at the castle by Gregory Peck and never to see him again. Like, “I must go, my nameless vaguely European kingdom needs me!”

“Why is it always a tiny, tiny European country? Like Europe even has the space?” Lance wondered aloud. “Or maybe it’s because there aren’t that many kingdoms left outside of Europe.”

“What are you talking about?” Keith asked, meeting his eyes in the motorbike’s rear-view mirror. 

“You know, places like Ruritania, Zenda, Syldavia and Genovia, little European kingdoms that just pop all over the place in stories even know Europe barely has enough space for Russia.”

“At one point half of Europe was Russia,” said Keith. “Wait, Genovia isn’t a real country?”

“Nope, recently found that out.” Lance relaxed and set his chin on Keith’s shoulder. He could smell his hair as the wind was blowing through it. “Although, we could be thinking of Geneva, which is an actual place.”

“Where?” Keith asked with the excitement of a kid hearing the ice cream truck, swerving the motorbike in a reactive jerk that ripped a gasping scream out of Lance’s mouth. “Sorry.”

“Switzerland,” Lance whimpered. “That’s number one on my list of travel spots.”

“What’s the second and third?”

“Rome, of course, and Paris, just to see what all the hype is about.”

“You ever been outside the country?” Keith asked pensively.

“If you count going to Hawaii as outside the country…” Lance joked. “Yeah, I’ve been to Cuba like five or six times — only remember three times, and to Hawaii like three times?”

“What’s in Hawaii?”

“Hunk — my best buddy’s family runs a tourism agency on the Big Island,” Lance explained. “Hunk, his parents and sister moved to Cali when I some thirteen odd years ago and we met at the welcome-to-the-neighborhood party.”

“Did you end up insulting him too?” Keith asked cheekily.

“What? Noooo, I’ve always been smooth, it’s not my fault your face happened to tick me off today,” Lance defended awkwardly. “Please, Hunk thought I was so cool he asked — no, begged to be my friend because I was the coolest kid on the block. I had Pokemon light-up sneakers.” 

Keith snorted loudly. “I’ll ask him myself for that same story.”

“No, no, no, no, you will not,” Lance insisted, ducking his head as the motorcycle rushed under a tree with a breaking branch. “Fine, you win. Hunk was not dying to be my friend, I actually didn’t have that many friends. I basically hung out with my brother Tristan more than anyone from primary school.”

“So, how’d he win your magnificent self over?”

“Once my sister Elena started playing with his sister Misty and Tristan played with neighborhood friends, I was kind of left on my own at the party,” Lance recounted, a tinge of sadness at that moment returning. “Then out from behind this big, ugly, plastic potted plant comes this kid in a bright yellow giraffe T-shirt and he asks if I want to play Operation. Actually? He barely asked me, he just grabbed my arm and pulled me up to his room and we spent hours trying out all the new games he got for his birthday.”

Fond memories filled his chest with this warm, fuzzy feeling, like a firefly was pulsing its light on and off, creating a halo of gold around it in the dark. “We spent hours playing Monopoly. I nearly stopped talking to him after the fifth time he beat me.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “Spend most of my week at his house,” Lance said. “Hunk’s favorite thing in the whole wide world is pulling stuff apart, understanding why combining it with some things is good and why with others is bad, and then he puts them back together. So, naturally, he’s double-majoring in mechanical engineering and culinary arts.”

“How does that even connect?”

“Well, the plan was he and his cousins Kenny and Marina want to set up a Hawaiian-Japanese California fusion restaurant, half of it is in the works, but they still have no name for it, and no definite answer on whether Hunk actually wants to go into the restaurant business or focus on building and fixing planes.” 

“Planes?”

“Yeah, we’re both into aviation,” Lance said, wrapping his arms tighter around Keith’s waist as he felt the bike curving along with the lane and bending off to the side. “I wanted to be a pilot and he was going to be the guy who made my planes.”

“You still think that’s going to happen?”

“Honestly…I’m not so sure anymore,” Lance admitted. Ever since the Fall semester began, Hunk has been so preoccupied with his side of the studies, then he made new friends, friends Lance had nothing to say to and then he met Shay. It was great that his best bud was thriving in this place and having a life and all, but he didn’t want to be at the expense of their dreams.

Did they even share the same dream anymore?

“It’s nice of him, to approach you like that,” Keith told him. “I’ve been left on my own at so many parties, gatherings and camping trips where I’m supposed to bond with the other kids, have fun, make friends, and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t figure out how to talk to them. I’d stand there and tell myself to move closer and say hi and try to be friendly, but it’s like telling me to sculpt a Renaissance masterpiece out of stone.”

Keith sighed and slowed down as the light turned yellow up ahead. “Then once they figured out I was a bit…” Keith wiggled his fingers by his temple. It was a gesture Lance didn’t see often, but he knew it mean nuts. “…Not like them, that’s when their fun with me started.”

“The offer to punch their dicks and guts is still open.”

Lance caught a smile playing at Keith’s mouth in the rear-view mirror. “I’m tempted to take you up on it, but they all moved around the state.”

“Then on our way to the California Academy of Sciences we can make a little karma road trip,” Lance suggested, wiggling in his seat, rolling the words _road trip_ with giddy, eyebrow-wagging gusto. “Make a pitstop at each address, ring the doorbell and be like ‘ _Remember me? Well, now you do. DICK PUNCH!’_ ”

Keith shook his head, his laughs airy and quiet. “Too much effort, I already said all I wanted was to never see them again. But, really, Lance, you’re lucky that Hunk actually forced his way into your life, I always wished someone would do that with me. Come up and say, ‘We’re friend now’ and I would have no choice about it.”

Lance smiled into the crook of Keith’s neck. “You know what he said to me, the first time I asked him why he talked to me out of all the kids there that day, why he picked me to play Operation and two hours of Monopoly?”

“What?”

 _“‘I was worried about you’,”_ Lance recalled, feeling a distant heaviness in his mind as he quoted Hunk’s very words. “He said he saw me all alone and needing any kind of attention, felt I was too upset, then he ambushed me. Hasn’t left my side since…or till recently, depending on how you’d count it.” 

“What happened?”

“Shay. I know I’m being stupid but she did pretty much take him away from me. He was with me every day for years, came home with me for the holidays and spent other holidays indoors with me and now he’s split between her, his family, his studies and me. _Me_ being the smallest chunk in that pie chart.” 

“It’s kind of hard, losing someone that’s been a part of your life everyday for years to a girl, isn’t it?” Keith asked meaningfully. “Makes you think that maybe if you were a girl they wouldn’t leave you at all.”

“It does. If I was a girl Hunk would have married me by now since he always talks about how much he wants to marry his best friend.”

“Do you want to marry him?” Keith asked, confusion apparent in his voice.

“No, but I would since he’s the best option, right? He knows me inside out, knows my family, puts up with my shit and already lives with me, that’s basically marriage right there.”

“You might be missing a few factors.”

“Like most married couples have sex after having kids?” Lance snorted. “Or even love each other, especially after they supposedly did? It’s a business arrangement, especially if you have no better options and you might as well do it with someone you already know.”

“I don’t think we’re having the same conversation,” Keith said, even more confused.

“What are you talking about?”

“I — I don’t know, really. I don’t have parents, most of the parents I know are divorced, separated or just putting up with each other. All the shows I watched act like marriage is a prison. All my teachers talked about their wives like they were a job they hated and about their husbands like they were burdens, and all the couples I saw in school barely lasted for months or sometimes a week,” Keith told him, slowing down the pace of the motorcycle. “They’d break up and get back together within the month or they just left each other at graduation.”

Lance held on tighter and turned his head on Keith’s shoulder so his cheek rather than his chin rested on the cold leather of his jacket and he watched the empty road beside them to count the trees divided sections of the sidewalk. It was as empty as he suddenly felt.

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Keith admitted. “I’m just confused.”

“Now or in general?”

“Both? I feel locked out of the loop most of the time, it’s like half of what everyone says goes over my head unless I focus pretty hard.” 

They had reached the shopping block near the campus, everyone was mostly closed save for the few shops who stayed open till ten on the weekdays. Most of the windows were still lit, emitting light out onto the street in yellow or white rectangles on the moonlight-blue town. 

Taking a deep breath, Lance looked ahead, Keith’s gloved hands loosely gripped the handles and the college had started to come into view. “My parents split up on my birthday last year.”

The motorcycle went from gliding along the road to a sudden slow crawl. Keith turned his head to an awkward angle just to lock eyes with Lance. He didn’t say any of the answers Lance usually got when he mentioned his eighteenth birthday, “I’m sorry,” or “Dude, that sucks,” or respond with his own parent’s issues, he just went, “That’s some pretty shitty timing they’ve got there.”

“Right? Couldn’t they wait a few more days?”

They didn’t say anything for the rest of the ride back to the dorms. They parked Keith’s bike and walked along the outside till they reached their halfway point, Keith’s building behind through the back of the one next to them and Lance’s being a few feet ahead.

Keith stood with one hand in his pocket and the other holding his jacket behind his back, his hair loose and messy, a reckless sort of ease that made Lance’s hold back a moan as he imagined those gloves on his sides and that hair in his hands. 

“What now?” Keith asked him.

Lance didn’t have an answer. He was looking for a fun date for the day just so he wouldn’t be judged by the inescapable happy couples everywhere today including on his Facebook feed and YouTube homepage. If he got something casual out of that date then great, but he didn’t bank on it being by himself, with a guy and a guy he found super attractive.

But did he want to see Keith again? Keith said it himself, couples broke up and moved on fast or stuck around until they had to break it off for graduation. He could just do what Hunk suggested, stay friends with Keith, but Lance had a pretty bad track record with friends he wanted to sleep with.

Ignoring all his thoughts and letting his single-minded desires take over, Lance moved in for a quick kiss. 

Keith punched the side of his head.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it took so long to updaaaaaate

Keith stuck around long enough to buy Lance a can of Coke, press it against his face and mutter a quick apology. After that, he rushed down the alley between the student buildings and vanished out of sight, leaving Lance standing there, stunned, with a bruising cheek.

He made it back to his room in a daze and opened the door to Hunk and Shay giggling like little girls. Shay, a girl Hunk met in a Hawaiian student association on campus, was a champion wrestler and bigger than the both of them, and Hunk frequently used it as an excuse to be carried or sit on her lap, which he was in now.

“Lance!” Hunk greeted, throwing his arm out so hard he fell backwards off Shay’s lap. “Jesus, man, what happened?”

Lance took the can off his face and pointed to his numb cheek. “Keith happened.”

“He hit you?” Shay gasped disbelievingly. “What did you do?”

“Me? Why do you think it’s my fault?”

Shay and Hunk gave him identical suspicious looks. 

“What was the context here?” Hunk asked.

“Context?”

“What did you say before he hit you?”

“Nothing!”

“Alright then, what did you do?” Shay repeated.

“I tried to give him a fucking goodnight kiss and he punched my head.”

“Did you ask if you could kiss him?” Hunk asked him, sitting on his bed next to Shay.

“No?”

“Lance.”

“I kissed him before and he seemed fine with it.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t trick me into going out with random strangers who punch people on whims!”

Shay picked up her bag and rushed past Lance. “Look at the time, gotta go, goodnight, guys.”

“Lance, we already talked about this…”

“No, we did not! Why did you do this, huh? Did you think it was funny? Poor Lance can’t get a date so let’s stick him with this borderline aggressive weirdo because no one else will have either of them —”

“I was worried about you!”

Lance’s mouth slammed shut. 

Hunk got up and dusted his pants, an excuse to not meet Lance’s eyes. “You were starting to get depressed again, you’re not making friends, you’re not joining clubs and you’re prioritizing me a bit too much, and I want to help. Shay wanted to help Keith too. He can’t talk to people and he wants to.”

“He could talk to them if he didn’t throw soda at them then hit them,” Lance said grumpily, touching his cheek. He removed his hand with a sharp hiss, the feeling had come back.

“Keith’s a reactive guy, he’s wired a little differently, you can’t hold that against him.”

“Yes, I can. If I have to quote-unquote control myself as you’re always telling me to then everyone else has to.”

Hunk was about to fire back when his watch beeped. He checked it and a small frown tugged at his brows. “Was it that bad?”

“Was what? The punch? No, I’ve had worse, but it’s the principle of it!”

“I meant the date, you drama queen.”

Lance toed off his shoes and stomped over to his bed, dropping on it. “It was…weird, really.”

“Lance.”

“What?”

“Is this only about the hit or was the whole things bad? Because you were out for hours and you didn’t answer of my texts then you turn up with a bruise. I’m going to assume one of two things here, either Keith kidnapped you or you said something to him that set him off.”

“The date was fine! It was fun until he decked me and no, I didn’t say anything. I was just trying to give him a kiss, yeesh!”

Hunk eyed him skeptically. Lance’s face burned, out of embarrassment or offense or just from the throbbing pain Keith’s random hit gave him. “What?”

“You sure you din’t do anything wrong? Nothing at all? Even say something very Lance-ish that he made take as offensive?”

“Dude! You’re supposed to be on my side here!”

“I’m not taking any sides. Did you ask him why he did it?”

“I didn’t have the chance to,” said Lance, pressing the cold can closer to his skin. “He just bought me the Coke and took off.”

“That means he at least feels sorry. Maybe he didn’t mean it.”

“He didn’t mean it? Hunk, that’s what people in abusive relationships say.”

“Yes, but —”

“I’m not getting in an abusive relationship with a mullet!” Lance insisted a bit too intensely.

Hunk took the can from him, held eye contact with Lance, and opened it.

Lance crossed his arms and pouted. “What’s the big idea?”

“If he hadn’t had given you a literal headache, would you have gone out with him again?”

Lance shrugged, looking away. “I don’t know, maybe.”

“Did you like him?”

“…Yeah, he was weird but in a fun way.”

“Do you want to try talking it out with him. Communication is key, you know.”

“No. No way. Uh-uh. If anyone is going to talk things out it’s him, he has to come to me and say he’s sorry, not the other way around.”

Hunk sighed heavily and sipped the Coke. “Can’t say I didn’t try.”

With a huff, Lance kicked off his shoes and pants and dropped on his side.

Shutting his eyes, he refused to think about Keith’s laugh or his stupid choppy ponytail or whatever it was Lance could have done to get decked.

It didn’t work.

 

* * *

 

 

February ended with Lance avoiding Keith like the plague but still thinking about him constantly.

The problem was, just what would Lance say to him even if the hit wasn’t personal? “I’m not looking for anything serious, I just wanted company for Valentine’s Day so I wouldn’t feel like a complete loser?” because that was mostly it. Now that he thought about it, Lance was pretty much using Keith who felt like he was only ever going to get asked out just to get pranked or used, so maybe in some roundabout karmic way, Lance did deserve that punch.

February moved into March and the second trimester’s finals arrived to kick his ass, so he went out less and stayed in more with Hunk and Pidge cramming, reviewing and helping each other revise. Keith sank back to the far depths of Lance’s mind, which was overtaken by chemistry and physics shorthand and separate sections of his brain memorizing biology and history. God fuck American universities and their General Education requirement bullshit, if Lance didn’t want to take World War I and II for the third year in a row he shouldn’t have to!

Finals came in a blur of notes, hands smeared with blue ink, several cups of coffee, cat naps and Simple Plan replays, because Lance felt that bad for himself but also too tired to do his own whining, so he let the embarrassingly whiny _Welcome to My Life_ and _Just A Kid_ do it for him. 

Once finals were over he came back to his room and blasted Panic! at the Disco’s _Hallelujah_ and did a victory dance, then he packed up to go home for Spring Break.

At the front of the school by the bus stop, people were boarding busses home or cars with their friends and parents to head home for the ten days of freedom. Lance stuffed his things in the trunk, hopped in the car and high-five’d his youngest siblings Elaine and Percy.

Just as they started driving out of the campus street, Lance spotted Keith’s red jacket and his heart lurched to the tug of a million conflicted emotions. Keith, Shiro and Shiro’s aunt Nattie were walking along, speaking to each other in Japanese. 

Lance was caught between rolling down the window and shouting at him and doing nothing at all. Just what would he do if he got his attention?

By the time he had made up his mind, Keith was out of sight and Lance wanted to kick himself for never getting Keith’s number.

 

* * *

 

 

Spring break was a very introspective time. Also, California had pretty much skipped over spring and landed them directly in summer, and Lance spent half the time arguing with his mom over the thermostat. He was boiling and could only take off so many layers of clothes before it became indecent and she was always cold. God help them once August rolled around, he was camping out in the pool all summer. He might turn brown as a nut and reek of chlorine but at least he’ll be cool. 

“What’s the matter with you?” Elaine asked him the sixth day of break. They were watching a 90s anime he couldn’t remember on Toonami and one of the characters had Keith’s hairstyle, except it was red and very angular, so very angular. (Not _Yu-Gi-Oh!_ angular but still too rigid and illogical. Fucking anime hairstyles and their defying logic-ness.)

So, Keith not only had a backwards ‘Business in the back, party in the front’ mullet, it was an Asian mullet. 

He needed to stop making everything about Keith. He wasn’t that great of a kisser and he had shitty taste in soft drinks. Cherry Coke, seriously. 

“Nothing, Lainey.”

“Sure there isn’t, and I’m the King of Norway.”

“It’s just this guy.”

“Ohhhh, you have a boyyyyyfriend?”

Lance smacked most of her fluffy brown hair over head and onto her face. “Shut up.”

Elaine parted her hair like a curtain to peek up at him deviously. “Do you?”

“No, and I think I messed up the chance of getting one.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been feeling weird about it for a month, and we only ever went on one date.”

“Why not try another date?”

“Because we were tricked onto going on the first one and I don’t know if it will be as fun or exciting or interesting or whatever as the first date if I go in with my eyes open this time. Besides, I’m going to transfer to a flight school there’s no point in giving myself the heartache and having a relationship with someone at this campus. Long-distance sucks.” Lance stopped to take a deep breathe and continued. “I just don’t know if I should or shouldn’t bother.”

“Do you miss him?”

“I didn’t know him long enough to miss him.”

“If you’re still thinking about him then you’re missing him, or missing what you could have had with him.”

Lance quirked a curious eyebrow down at his sister. “When did your twelve year-old ass get so wise?”

“I read a lot of self-help and lifestyle guru blogs.”

“Huh.”

That night, he texted Shay asking for Keith’s number. He got with a warning that if he upset Keith again he was going to get body slammed. Lance quickly texted back several times, one sentence broken up into _“What?? Did?? He?? Say?? TELL ME!!!”_ only to get a terse response of “Ask him yourself, you chicken.”

Lance offendedly replied a loud “I’M NOT A CHICKEN! I AM A GOLDEN GOOSE!” and got no reply.

He flopped back onto his bed and stared at the papier-mâché solar system he and Hunk made in 7th grade. It was a pseudo-science project when they had moved into the astronomy section, the planets and sun were originally set up on a stand, once he was graded Lance strung them up and taped them to the ceiling, a way to keep his goal always on his mind, that one day he would read the sky if not the stars.

He wanted to see the stars in that planetarium with Keith.

Groaning, he rolled over and hit his iPhone in its dock and put it on shuffle. Green Day’s _Whatsername_ flowed out the speakers, a soothing melody. This was one of his favorite albums, Keith and he discussed music a bit too briefly for his taste, but it turns out they several of the usual linked bands, in the sense that if you liked Green Day chanced were that you liked Blink, and if you liked Blink you liked Fall Out Boy which lead into Panic! — Lance’s mistress — and My Chemical Romance.

He would rarely admit that his first Warped Tour love was Cobra Starship, even if he saw a kindred spirit in Gabe Saporta. 

 _“…remember, whatever, it seems like forever ago. The regrets are useless in my mind, she’s in my head…”_ crooned out, melancholic, nostalgic and playing the world’s saddest violin on Lance’s heartstrings, stirring up the vivid images of Keith laughing and hanging upside down.

Shit, he was getting too emotional over a missed-chance romance by imagining the experiences they could have had set to this damn song.

He checked his phone, Keith’s number registered as Mullet Zuko. 

“To ‘’Sup?’ or not to ‘’Sup?’?” Lance wondered to himself.

Feeling brave enough, Lance forgoed? Forwent? Sending a simple “Hey,” and straight up sent a random question to give off the air of him being aloof. 

 

Thurs, March 28th, 10:45 PM:

 

Me: _Isn’t the Japanese New Year soon?_

Me: _This is Lance btw_

 

Half an hour passed in anticipation and three replays of All Time Low’s _That Girl_ because he was in that kind of mood.

Once his phone buzzed though, Lance was on it like a cat on a red dot.

 

Thurs, Mar 28, 11:25 PM:

 

Mullet Zuko: **I think you mean the Chinese New Year.**

Me: _Yea, that’s what I meant._

Mullet Zuko: **There’s a difference, seeing as Japan uses the Western calendar**

Me: _Is there really a difference really between all three of you on that side of Asia?_

Me: _Except for half of Korea being a 1980s sci-fi political thriller_

Mullet Zuko: **Is there a difference between you and a Mexican?**

Me: _HOW DARE_

Me: _We are VERY different_

Me: _We dont even speak teh same kind of spanish_

Me: _Hell mexico doesnt speak 1 type of spanish_

Me: _Its so huge they have like 10000000x dialects_

Mullet Zuko: **You don’t speak any Spanish**

Me: _No I don’t!_

Me: _Wait_

Mullet Zuko: **Japanese New Year is the same the regular New Year. Goodnight, Lance.**

Me: _WAIT!!!11!!_

Mullet Zuko: **What.**

Me: _Im srry u hit me on teh head_

 

Right after he typed it out Lance moved to slam his palm on his face and ended up hitting himself with the wrong hand, slamming the phone on his nose and typing out gibberish.

A long pause passed. Lance feared that he had once again fucked up.

 

Thurs, Mar 28, 11:30 PM:

 

Mullet Zuko: **Why are you apologizing? I’m the one who hit you.**

Me: _I DONT KNOW_

Me: _ITS TEH ONLY WAY I CAN GET U TO TALK 2 ME AGAIN_

Mullet Zuko: **Lance, you’re the one who stopped talking to me**

Me: _YES CUZ U HIT ME_

Me: _Y U HIT ME?_

Mullet Zuko: I’ll do it again if you keep typing like someone with a keypad phone from 2007

Me: _You’re a dick. There, you happy?_

Mullet Zuko: **_Sending Image_**

Me: _Accepted_

Mullet Zuko: **Downloading**[ _elmofire.gif_](https://media0.giphy.com/media/yr7n0u3qzO9nG/200_s.gif)

Me: _You fucking nerd I can’t believe you just sent me the elmo fire gif_

Mullet Zuko: **You asked**

Me: _Nerd :P_

Mullet Zuko: **Says the loser with his own custom Power Ranger suit**

Me: _Fuck you you’re just jealous of my blue suit swag_

Me: _Who was your favorite ranger?_

Mullet Zuko: **The red one**

Mullet Zuko: **Shiro and I binge watched the show last year**

Me: _We should get you the red version then we can be rangers together_

Me: _Hunk would be the yellow, the gremlin would be green_

Mullet Zuko: **Guess that leaves Shiro and Allura for black and pink**

Me: _Who would be the white ranger???_

Mullet Zuko: **Pidge’s abomination of a robot dog**

Me: truuuuuu

 

Lance found himself smiling at his phone, his heart opened up a bit, making it easier to breathe.

 

Me: _Soooooo, we good?_

Mullet Zuko: **You’re not mad at me?**

Me: _‘You’ are not at ‘me’?_

Mullet Zuko: **No**

Me: _Then why’d you hit me, man? I thought we had a bonding moment!_

Mullet Zuko: **I don’t know I just sometimes act without thinking**

Mullet Zuko: **I’ve always been like this**

Mullet Zuko: **I perceive things as threats and panic and lash out**

Mullet Zuko: **I saw you coming closer and thought you were going to headbutt me or bite my nose or some shit and panicked**

Me: _Dude, it was clearly a kiss. We kissed before._

Mullet Zuko: **I’m high-functioning.**

Mullet Zuko: **On the high-functioning end of the spectrum, I mean**

Mullet Zuko: **A lot things clear to most people aren’t clear to me**

Mullet Zuko: **I’m slow in that sense**

Mullet Zuko: **I can’t help it, not without focusing real hard**

Me: _I kinda get what you’re coming from since I’m ADHD sometimes things I feel and sense aren’t the same way most people do and I need to focus twice as hard sometimes_

Mullet Zuko: **Same but its usually social stuff with me**

Mullet Zuko: **Can focus great in school and be single minded in a productive way**

Mullet Zuko: **But put me in a group and I’m lost, it’s why it took so many years of me being pranked and set-up for jokes for me to get it was all for a laugh at my expense**

 

Lance felt like shit all over again. He rethought his entire experience with Keith and changed his name.

 

Me: _You could have just told me from the beginning…_

Keith: **I really couldn’t have**

Keith: **Been called ‘special’ and ‘retarded’ too many times already without people actually knowing**

Me: _I’m not like that_

Keith: **I know that now**

Me: :)

Keith: **So, we’re definitely good**

Me: _Do you wanna see me again? Go out on another date maybe?_

Keith: **Yeah, I’d like that**

Me: _Great! First day back on campus?_

Keith: **Yes!**

Me: _Can’t wait then!_

Keith: **Me neither**

Keith: **Night!**

Keith: *kiss emoji*

Me: *heart-eyes emoji*

 

Lance set down his phone flopped back on his pillows, eyes on the ceiling. He reached over and turned up the speakers again.

That turned out a lot better than he had hoped.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [**Tumblr**](http://lucyclairedelune.tumblr.com)!
> 
>  
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> Don't forget to comment! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧


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